Cars (not the Disney movie)

So, My dear friend Jessica ran over a pothole the other day and blogged about how she changed the tires, got a little messy, but thanks to a loving father who taught her basics, she managed to get it all taken care of.

This got me thinking of my great friend Janell. I have to say the only thing reckless that we did in high school was drive reckless cars. When Janell turned 16, she got a gold Crown Vic that looked like undercover/non-undercover police cars. We use to love following people just to mess with them. We did a lot of things we shouldn't have in her car, such as changing driver/passenger seats while driving 75 on the highway between St Joe and Oregon. We went to support her boyfriend at a baseball game one night and on the way home, we missed a turn and ended up having to make a u-turn in the middle of the highway. As we were across both lanes of traffic on the dark, two lane highway, the car stalled. Ka-put. We had already passed 2 cars so we knew that some cars were coming from behind, and as we looked toward what should've been oncoming traffic, we saw more cars coming. We felt like a stalled car on some train tracks. As I opened the door to get out of the car and make a run for it, Janell miraculously got the car started and we were able to finish the u-turn and make our "missed" turn and proceed home.

Though we took our Ford Bronco to Missouri with us, the same Ford Bronco that my mom drove us around in, that Mike drove to school, seminary and many other places, the Bronco that Jenny drove me and her to school in (when she lived with us), I was not allowed to drive it. It was a gas hog, 7ish miles to the gallon, the gas gauge didn't work, so we had to calculate everything, and seminary was about 7 miles itself outside of town, so I understood why I couldn't drive Bobby and I to seminary and school (though I have no clue why when he got his license he was allowed to drive it. Either way, that has nothing to do with this story, so I'll proceed.)

(this isn't the Monte Carlo I drove, but it is pretty similar. The one I drove was black and still a big pimpin car.)

Instead of the Bronco, I got to drive a '76 Monte Carlo. It was my mom's boyfriends car when he was in high school or something. It had a black exterior, black interior, had been refurbished twice already and was in desperate need of being refurbished again. What do I mean by refurbish??? You could crawl into the trunk from one side and crawl out the other side (Bobby did it a couple times.) It was so rusty that parts were constantly flying off the vehicle whether you were going 10 mph or 65. I was driving over the Missouri River one day with Bobby and a couple friends joking about the car and I made a comment about how one of the tires could come off and I'd laugh. As we hit the top of the bridge, the front passenger tire came right off and rolled down the rest of the bridge. Thanks to Bobby who ran and got the tire and lugnuts (yes, the lugnuts came off so teh axel plate was complete;y flat) and brought it back, but when the wheel came off, it damaged the door and front fender so we were no longer able to open the passenger door, which put a huge damper on giving people rides. I have to admit, some of the coolest things about this car was that it had swivel driver and passenger seats, and that no one in a 400 mile radius of St. Joe drove a car like mine. (That might also be why I got to be the popular unpopular chick.) I was grateful to have a car to drive, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I would've rather walked or hitched a ride.

One of my favorite stories in the Beast was Janell's and my trip to Savannah one day that our school let out early. It was spring cause I remember everything was green. It wasn't too hot and there wasn't any snow so probably about Marchish. We thought we'd drive up to Savannah (which is only a hop skip and a jump North of St Joe) and stalk who I think by then was Janell's ex. Yes, the ex that we went all around northwest Missouri to see play football and baseball.

(this is Highway 59. This is about where we had our spinout.)

We were driving on the highway 59 which is a beautiful highway. It is a little smaller than major expressways but bigger than a two lane highway/road. We were chatting away, listening to oldies, passing pokie drivers, letting the wind blow through our hair when the car takes control of itself, does a double 360 in the middle of the grassy highway and then finally stops. There is dust all around our car, filling the air in the car, and I am frozen.

What the heck just happened?!

"Janell?"

"Janell? Are you ok?" I can't see a thing or hear anything. I'm reaching frantically around trying to see through the dust and see if she's ok.

"Whoa. What happened?" she finally said.

"You ok? You hurt anywhere?" I asked her.

"Nope. Just a little startled."

"Me too."

We then started to get out of the car to see what had happened.

The dust was finally settling and we were finally getting back to the normal teenagers we were 5 minutes ago. We were walking around the car trying to see what happened. I didn't hit anything in the road, there was no smoke coming from under the hood, so the engine as far as I knew was ok. We checked the tires to see if one blew, but I didn't remember hearing anything pop. That's when we saw it. The back passenger side tire had been scalped down to the steel belts. Where was the rubber? The tread? Even still more important, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Janell saw the tread of the tire about a 1/2 mile back and she went to go retrieve it. As she was doing that, I finally figured out that the wheel well (what was left from it since it was mostly corroded and that's how you were able to crawl into the trunk) had somehow bent down the opposite way the wheels were turning, during the perfect part of our trip, and shaved the tread right off causing us to spin in circles.

We were able to still drive the car, but we knew we couldn't make it to Savannah or back to St Joe on this gimp tire. We got to the proper side of the road and prayed. Not 15 minutes later, a guy saw us poor helpless teenagers (who didn't have cell phones cause back then, kids just didn't have cell phones) and pulled over to see what we needed help with. We explained what happened, and he magically pulled 2 tires out of his trunk. They fit the Monte Carlo perfect. One was for the messed up tire, the other was a spare for future use. We tried to get him to follow us back to St Joe to get him cash for the tires, or replace them, but he refused. Janell kept telling me how he was an angel and I could only agree with her.

It is good for girls to learn how to change spares. Though, I would leave it to the hubs or AAA, but when you're in a hurry to stalk someone it's good to know how to do these kinds of things.